The financial crisis has had at least one interesting side effect: the rise of alternative and increasingly creative forms of investments. Peer to peer lending, also known as peer to peer loans or P2P for short. It is a new method of credit transaction in which the lenders (creditors) directly lend money to the borrowers (debtors) without the intervention of banks or other traditional financial institutions.

Peer-to-peer lending, sometimes abbreviated to P2P lending, is the practice of lending money between individuals. The act of lending from one individual to another has existed for many years, and often done through informal agreements.